With family and friends scattered around the world, Kobi and his bride knew from the beginning that a destination wedding made sense. He was from California, she was from Canada, and their search could have taken them almost anywhere.
But Antibes wasn’t simply another beautiful option on the French Riviera.
The bride had studied at SKEMA Business School in Antibes and shared some of her favorite memories there with her late mother. Returning to the city still makes her feel her mother’s presence, and choosing it for their wedding offered a meaningful way to honor her and feel that she was part of the celebration.
After several visits to Antibes together, the couple found their venue at Hôtel Belles Rives. Once the former villa of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the waterfront hotel offered the history, classic French style, and understated elegance they wanted with one major bonus: it was intimate enough to become entirely theirs.
So they privatized the hotel for the weekend.
Taking over an iconic French Riviera hotel
Having Hôtel Belles Rives entirely to themselves transformed the traditional destination-wedding experience.
Most of their family and friends stayed together at the hotel, meaning the celebration extended far beyond the scheduled events. Guests saw one another at breakfast each morning, crossed paths throughout the property, and returned to the hotel’s waterfront terrace after events to recap the night and inevitably keep the party going. Those unplanned hours became some of the couple’s favorite memories.
Instead of asking loved ones to travel across the world for a single wedding day, Kobi and his bride created a shared French Riviera experience that unfolded over an entire weekend.
Bridal style: Lee Grebenau and heirloom jewelry
For the wedding, the bride wore a Lee Grebenau gown from NWLA, with alterations by Nano in Los Angeles.
Her jewelry was intentionally understated and deeply sentimental, combining family gifts with pieces from her late mother’s collection.
Most meaningful were the teardrop earrings her mother had given her. The bride had been saving them specifically for the day she got married.
Wearing them in Antibes—a place already filled with memories of her mother—quietly connected her bridal look to one of the most important reasons she had chosen the French Riviera in the first place.
Later, she changed into a second look by Whyte Couture, a Toronto-based mother-daughter design duo, while Kobi wore a made-to-measure Zegna tuxedo.
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A waterfront chuppah in Antibes
Photographed by Julia Kaptelova, the ceremony became one of Kobi and his bride’s favorite parts of the weekend.
Set on the terrace at Hôtel Belles Rives with the Mediterranean stretching beyond them, the couple blended Jewish wedding traditions honoring their heritage and families with elements that felt distinctly personal.
They exchanged vows beneath a chuppah by Roni Florals Official overlooking the water and incorporated the traditional breaking of the glass, while their own personal vows brought a more modern and intimate dimension to the ceremony.
Against a place carrying so much history for the bride, the ceremony became a celebration of both where they came from and the life they were beginning together.
Cocktails directly on the water
Following the ceremony, guests moved outside for cocktail hour directly along the water. Live music from Artists Live immediately shifted the energy from ceremony to celebration. Jazz saxophone, live vocals, and additional musicians interacted with guests as cocktails and canapés circulated, bringing the lively, experiential quality the couple loved about European celebrations.
Music continued evolving throughout the evening rather than existing as a single reception element. Even the traditional parent dances featured live musical performances, creating moments that felt less rehearsed and more immersive. It was one of the details guests continued talking about long after the wedding ended.
An Assouline book becomes the guest book
One of the couple’s best details began with a discovery that seemed almost too perfect.
They came across Assouline’s The French Riviera in the 1920s, a coffee-table book documenting the region during the same era associated with Fitzgerald and Hôtel Belles Rives.
Exactly 100 years later, they turned it into their wedding guest book.
Friends and family were encouraged to flip through the book and leave messages in metallic markers directly over whichever pages they chose. Because Hôtel Belles Rives and other recognizable Antibes destinations appear throughout, the finished book became much more than a collection of signatures.
It is now a piece of French Riviera history layered with their own.
Dinner beneath a ceiling of stars
For dinner, guests gathered beneath a clear tent designed to preserve the feeling of being outside on the French Riviera.
The sides remained open to the beautiful weather and waterfront setting, while an illuminated ceiling overhead created the illusion of dining beneath stars.
Rather than closing guests off from the surroundings after sunset, the design allowed Antibes to remain part of the experience throughout the night. Dinner gradually gave way to dancing, and the party continued beneath the glowing tent until midnight. But midnight was hardly the end.
An after-party at Bar Fitzgerald until sunrise
When the tented reception officially wrapped, the entire celebration moved inside to the hotel’s iconic Bar Fitzgerald.
Named for the American author whose history is intertwined with the property, the bar offered an appropriately glamorous setting for the final chapter of the evening.
Guests continued dancing and celebrating until sunrise. For a wedding inspired partly by the romance and history of the French Riviera, ending the night inside Fitzgerald’s former villa felt almost impossibly fitting.
Wedding details designed to live beyond the weekend
Even some of the smallest details were created with life after the wedding in mind. Kobi’s mother surprised the couple with personalized bar linens embroidered with their initials. Servers draped the monogrammed linens over their arms while circulating cocktails and canapés, creating a subtle custom detail throughout the reception.
But what the bride particularly loved was that they weren’t destined to become wedding-day waste. The couple brought the linens home, where they can continue using them in their own house – a practical detail that has become another heirloom from the celebration.
A French Riviera wedding filled with family history
The beauty of Hôtel Belles Rives could have easily been enough to make Antibes an extraordinary wedding destination. For Kobi and his bride, though, choosing it meant something more.
It was a place tied to the bride’s younger years and some of her most treasured memories with her mother. She wore her mother’s earrings as she married Kobi there. Their families came from across the world and lived together beneath one roof for the weekend. They exchanged vows under a chuppah overlooking the Mediterranean, signed a book celebrating the Riviera a century earlier, and danced inside Fitzgerald’s former villa until the sun came up.
Even their photographer, Julia, focused on the moments the couple ultimately valued most: candid images of the people they love simply being together.
The French Riviera provided the beauty and history, but it was everything already connecting Kobi and his bride to the people and place around them that gave the weekend its meaning.
